Friday, May 13, 2005

Best First Concert of the Summer

After waking up Thursday morning and dealing with an enormous package that had arrived and wouldn't fit through my apartment door (more on that later) my first day of summer was off with a start, a start that consisted of me walking around everywhere and finally replacing my year and a half old New Balances (the soles of which had been worn down into the foam). But in the PM I met up with Amber and we went to the Canal Room to see Fischerspooner. At the show we ran into this fellow Steve, and the three of us secured a spot in the very front of the club.

After a good, long wait (at least it was well-deejayed—dude even played the Slits version of "'Heard it Through the Grapevine") Fischerspooner took the stage. Mr. Casey Spooner was backed-up for the evening by a band dressed like Warriors-esque baseball players. Look at this girl who was in the band—look at how she likes beer. Remember that for later.

It show was: brilliant. That about sums the whole thing up. Even when the band was playing songs I totally didn't know (I only know three Fischerspooner songs, afterall) I was still really liking it. It was so magnificently loud and the bass-situaton was so epic (definitely besting Dizzee Rascal a few weeks ago, I'm serious) I thought it was going to burst my chest open.

When you stand in the very front of the very center of a venue, it really puts you in the middle the action. Mr. Spooner kept making direct eye-contact with me, spat a mouthful of water all over us, and even did that lean out and sing into the audience thing right into my face, so much so that I wondered if I was supposed to do that thing where a member of the audience sings back into the microphone. I don't know how that would have gone, though. Although I said that I only know three FS songs, I didn't mean that I know the words to them.

There were video-projections during the whole show. Back in High School if there were videos being projected during a show was pretty much the make or break issue for me. In fact, between the art-techno of the band and the spiraling computer graphics, the whole event was very Culture-esque, Pete.

Casey Spooner is without a doubt the most tempermental and demanding artist I've seen live since Keith Jarrett (who spends half his shows complaining about the piano he has been given and threatening to walk off the stage). A couple times Casey stopped songs so that he could get a drink (don't forget that that girl liked beer, I'm going to get back to that) and even stopped the grand-finale number, "Emerge", a few minutes into the song because the crowd wasn't giving him back enough love.

But the crowd got itself worked up real good . . .

And the resulting second shot at "Emerge" killed.

There were confetti cannons and everything.

Now, remember how I said that girl liked beer? Near the end of the show Steve suddenly darts from his ideal spot up against the stage, disappears for a few minutes, and then returns with a Budweiser that he hands to the baseball girl. Did she appreciate it? Check out the makeup that rubbed off onto Steve's face.